More Than One-Third of Canada Watches Netflix

Subscription over-the-top (OTT) video viewership in Canada will grow 9.7% this year to reach 17.4 million, according to eMarketer. Netflix will capture more than 75% of those users, equating to 13.3 million viewers, or 36.0% of the population in Canada.

eMarketer expects the number of subscription OTT viewers in Canada will increase another 7.0% in 2019, but growth will slow to the low single digits by 2022 as the service nears saturation in the market. The increased time spent with online video comes at the expense of linear TV viewing.

“Netflix is the most notable brand associated with subscription video-on-demand, an industry that presents new challenges to the broadcast and cable oligopoly in Canada, which has historically operated with little competition from abroad,“ eMarketer senior analyst Paul Briggs said. “To compete with Netflix and other international services, the domestic industry is reshaping how it packages content for fragmented viewing across live and linear TV, DVR and set-top box solutions for on-demand viewing.“

Canada lags just slightly behind the US in terms of the percentage of people watching subscription OTT video. We forecast that 51.7% of residents in the US will watch subscription OTT video at least once a month this year, compared with 47.2% for those in Canada. However, the number of OTT services available to consumers in Canada is far fewer that what’s available in the US. Hulu and YouTube TV, for example, do not yet offer services to consumers in Canada.